Addiction of Misinformation
by Alyssa Iris
Summary: His daughter... looking to find him... find out more about herself. Can Sherlock hide all his secrets from the daughter he never wanted? Rated M for Drug Use. CHAPTER SIX POSTED!
1. Insomnia

She sat in the darkness. Her eyes were closed, her movements minimal. Quiet, but by far not relaxing, music sounded through her headphones. She was unable to sleep, even though it was nearly two in the morning. She yawned frequently, most likely from exhaustion. Her mind flitted through several subjects. She needed something to do. Sleep was irrelevant, boring. Sleep meant there was nothing to do! What should she concentrate on? Should she go back to the project she had commissioned to herself for the long seven weeks of the summer holidays – the artwork and inspiration she so craved throughout the time of school? School was horrible. You couldn't do anything interesting except listen to the teachers drone on about irrelevant trivia. Who cared if the Sun was the centre of our solar system? It wouldn't matter to her. The other thing she did at school, much to the annoyance of her teachers, was notice all the nuances surrounding them. Mr Jones was sleeping with Miss Blacke, despite the fact that he had two sons and a loving wife. Mrs Laden was falling into depression again and was taking some form of drug for it. She seemed to be nearly overdosing on it.

Music was good. It helped her keep awake. It helped her keep distracted from the normal world, the one she didn't associate with that well. She wanted to sing along, but she couldn't. If she did, she risked waking her adoptive parents, separated from her only by a few feet and a ceiling. Her real father, the one she had through DNA and human reproduction and not the one that had become her father through paperwork, hadn't wanted her. No one did. She was the too smart child. Too intelligent for her own good. Those were the exact words of the staff at the children's home. She was too old for that place. She could have survived on her own. She could do what her father did. Consult the police. But that wasn't enough, not for her. Her espionage skills, her ability to fade from view, her silence in movement and grace in procuring information, deserved much more than that. They deserved spy work. Yes. A teenage spy – how the rest of the world would quake in fear beneath England's new employee. The Shadow. A perfect nickname for her. Maybe she could go to her uncle. He would help her, wouldn't he? He'd employ her, find her a new home. Wouldn't he?

No. No way would she degrade herself like that. Uncle Mycroft was far too busy with whatever the government employed him to do. And how could she confine herself to the very ruling body that she hated? She couldn't go to her uncle. Not without compromising every single base instinct within her. She was just like her father, according to her doctor. Her doctor knew her father, he lived with her father. She had asked for information, after noticing the same things as her father had on the day both Doctor Watson and her father had met. She didn't even know her father's name, just that her birth name, her true maiden name, was Holmes. Now it was Reed. Georgina Reed.

She didn't like her name, not at all. It was horrible. Georgina Holmes rolled off the tongue; Georgina Reed didn't sound right. It sounded like a primal, guttural sound – like that allegedly made in the throes of orgasm. She shuddered. She needed to think of something else, and fast. As soon as she was old enough to do so, she was changing her name back to Holmes.

She grabbed her mobile phone. She loved to text, to surprise people. She would tell her classmates everything she could see about the teacher they had at the time. But that wasn't who she would text. Not tonight. As far as she could see, her father probably had the same insomnia as she did.

_I want to talk to my father._

_GH_

She sent the text to her doctor, who had given her his number reluctantly. She had insisted that she had a right to be able to talk to her father, who wouldn't even acknowledge her whenever she had attempted to talk to him in the past. Maybe that was the way of the Holmes family – inertly intelligent and remarkably stubborn, almost childlike, once a decision had been made.

Her phone vibrated against her thigh, just as she had settled down to go back to her pseudo-meditation.

_No._

That single word was the entirety of the message. There was nothing else, but it hadn't been sent from Dr. Watson's phone. It had been sent from a different number, one that she didn't recognise but knew nonetheless. Her father had made a mistake by using his phone. Great, she now had his number. Excellent, even. She could trace it and find her father's name, her father's address, anything she needed to know, she could now find. But for now… she should just text back. She wanted to talk, now she had the opportunity. But what to say?

_Insomnia?_

Yes, that was right. Ask about the insomnia. Had she inherited it or was it just her who had it?

_Go away._

Brilliant. Her father was an infantile prat. Then again, when she was upset or angry, she was one too. That obviously ran in the family, she could see that clearly.

_Mr. Holmes? I need your help._

Maybe that could get him interested. She grabbed her laptop, a red Packard Bell EasyNote TJ74. She used a program she had written and tested herself, using her own mobile as the test. It would trace the mobile straight to the owner, where the owner was. Of course, that information could be found elsewhere on the internet. This software, however, would also tell you anything and everything you needed to know about the owner of the mobile. The date of birth. Spouses. Children. Even favourite people. It had taken months to write, but now it was worth it. This was what she had written the software for, but she had been uncertain as to if she would ever gain the information she needed for it to work. Obviously she just had received it. She typed her father's number in and waited for it to load up the information.

_Not interested._

Jeesh, what would it take to get her father to talk to her? Maybe… maybe she could blackmail him with something… anything. Her computer screen flashed, indicating the program had finished its job.

She looked through the results.

_Name: Sherlock Holmes_

Ah. Sherlock, eh? Well, her uncle seemed to have gotten the raw deal in the names department. She wondered who was older. Was it Mycroft or Sherlock?

_Please, Sherlock. I just want to know more about my heritage._

Maybe she could find something out from police reports? No. She'd already been arrested twice for hacking into the mainframe of the police network. It was ridiculously easy, though. She had hacked it when she was six, the first time. They didn't have secure firewalls or passwords, that was for sure. The sleeping adults who deemed themselves her parents upstairs would freak if she got arrested a third time. The police _had_ said no more warnings. However, she needed to know. She could just say that she was looking into her father, if DI Lestrade asked anymore questions about it. Surely he would know her father – he had said that she looked a lot like her father...

She searched him on the internet. She looked at pictures. There were no proper pictures of him, just fleeting glances – a bush of dark, curly hair and a long, velvet coat. She had the hair, at least. It was longer, of course – down just past her shoulders –, and it had less of a curl and more of a wave. Maybe her mother had had straight hair – that would explain the wave of her hair rather than the curl that her father had.

_I'm not helping you._

Damn it. That wasn't fair. She had a right to know, after all. If she couldn't get it from the source… maybe she could put her espionage into practice. It was always good to have a little hack now and then, and her fingers were itching to access Command Prompt. Not tonight. Tonight she would just think. There was little else to do, after all. She could relax – in as much as she could with her forever active brain – and possibly get some sleep. Bah. She didn't want to sleep, but the lure of it was becoming more and more irresistible. She wouldn't dig into her past… not tonight.


	2. Addiction

Three nights later, she sat in the same position. Bloody hell, this insomnia was great, if only slightly annoying. Anyone who was remotely interesting enough to talk to on MSN was most likely asleep… whether it be alone or with someone else. The only person to talk to was her depressing father. She had tried to take up writing, maybe memoirs or fantasy, only to have it turn into a dismal clash of words mixed together into coherent sentences that had no purpose.

She reviewed the information she had gained from her details software every night. There was little to find out. Her father was generally quite careful. Except when it came to dealing with her.

Each night, after looking at the information and attempting to write more of a fantasy story that had little purpose except to entertain her momentarily, she would consider delving into her father's history. Was there anything else of interest? Had he, too, broken the law frequently in an attempt to alleviate the boredom that would grasp her without a moment's notice. Her old habit of doodling was going nowhere fast.

She looked at her mobile. Should she text him?

Yes. She would, tonight she would. If he didn't answer, she would call. If he still didn't answer, she would go to Baker Street. It was only a few streets down from her house.

_Hello?_

A simple text, one requesting an answer. She smirked, pressing the send button. One way or another, she would encounter her father. What would he be like? Would he slam the door in her face in a hasty attempt to return to sleep or whatever it was he did? Would he invite her inside, only to be a sulky child trapped within a man's body, as he seemed within the texts he had returned to hers?

An hour later, boredom struck at her. She needed to do something. Anything. What could she do? She could walk down the street to Dandy's. Dandy was the name of the local dealer around her street. He was normally out around this time, anyway. She knew this because she had been tempted before, and she had given in. Too many times to admit safely to her adoptive parents. She had promised them that she would never do drugs, but she needed something again. Anything to alleviate the boredom.

She wouldn't call. Not yet. Maybe her father was silently deliberating over whether or not to text back. She should go for a walk. It would give her something to do, and the cool night air would probably help her in some way. Possibly.

Once outside, she realised that there was so little to do. What could she do in the quiet lull of midnight? Should she seek out Dandy? She was still bored.

Within an hour, she was back in her house, in the same position as she had been before. Even if she did have a dopey look on her face, thanks to the cannabis she had discreetly smoked outside her house. The light had been a small pinprick of orange against the dark night. There was no moon and whatever stars there were had been blotted out by the pollution emitted by the factory nearby.

This was fun. The shapes that swirled around her were pretty, ethereal in their incandescent reality. She wanted to reach out and grab them, but they looked so fragile. She didn't want to destroy them with her clumsy fingers. She knew she should be doing something… but she didn't know what it was. She didn't mind. The shapes were far more interesting than anything else. She was content to just watch them dance to a silent song, one with a slow and sorrowful beat, it seemed.

Clarity slowly seeped back two hours later as the high faded. She wanted to grasp it back… but could she do it safely? Probably not. She now remembered what she had intended to do… but it was too close to dawn, too late for her to call now. She would call the next night if she hadn't received a text by then.

The day crawled by. She wanted her high back and was concocting ways to regain it. Ways that were probably unsafe and almost certainly lethal. She was too far gone, she realised. She wanted a new fix. She needed a new fix, the same way she needed a new intake of oxygen moments after she had exhaled. Her body, her mind, her soul, demanded the solace that she gained from each fix. She tried her pseudo-meditation, only to be transfixed by the haunting images of the beautiful shapes. They weren't quite right, though. They didn't captivate her. She wanted them to captivate her. But they wouldn't. She sighed. She needed release. Badly.


	3. Clouded

Flurries of red and blue lights, followed by numbing darkness. Men and women in pale green masks, peering down at her. More darkness. The worried faces of her adoptive parents. More darkness. A man with a bush of curly, dark hair. He had pale skin and greyish blue eyes. He seemed concerned. More darkness. A white room. A white bed. Lots of white. The scent of disinfectant. It was disorientating. She welcomed the darkness when it embraced her again.

The man was still there when she woke up. He looked asleep. How long had she been out? Her last known memory, a certain one etched within her brain, was of taking a multitude of household medicine… she needed that high, but she was empty in the financial sense. She couldn't afford another hit. Dandy was getting more and more expensive, not that she noticed. She was too desperate for her high by the time that she went to him.

She had overdosed on the paracetamol… the ibuprofen. Her adoptive parents would know now of her occasional hits. She'd be killed for sure when she got home. A small essence of laughter left her lips for a moment as she imagined their reaction. Angry. Disappointed. Disbelieving. They wouldn't understand how their intelligent and perfect, albeit adopted, daughter could even dare do something so stupid. Oh, if only they knew.

"Hey," she called out to the man, "Are you attempting to keep that failing semblance of sleep?"

"Indeed I am, little Georgina." The man seemed to have not moved an inch, still looking down at the hands folded across his solar plexus. "You caused your parents quite a scare."

"If my so-called parents had any care for me whatsoever, they would have noticed in the first place. They didn't, so they obviously do not care. They just don't want to lose the money they gain by taking care of me."

"Astute deductions, little one."

"How did you get in… before? I saw you…" Her words were slurred slightly, a side effect of the anaesthetic, no doubt. "With the doctors."

"I have my connections." That was all she heard before the darkness overwhelmed her again. When she next awoke, the man was gone.

"Bored," she moaned, elongating the word. Her head was resting against the pillow only barely, her dark hair contrasting against the sterile white. She shifted slightly and her head was hanging off the edge of the bed, rather than on the pillow at all. She blinked numerous times. The wall was even more boring than the plain, white, tiled ceiling – if that was possible. When she sat up again, her neck hurt and her hair felt… strange against it, as though her neck had decided that the weight of the hair was unneeded, but not uncomfortable. She had counted the ceiling tiles a number of times. There were one thousand and three, each tile being about an inch and a half squared.

Nothing seemed able to save her from the boredom.

"Where do I begin… with this life I'm living in," she murmured, missing the loud, raucous music that she listened to only nights before. How many nights… who knew? She certainly didn't. In this horrid sterile environment, there were no books, there was no music, no entertainment except the mindless chatter of the nurses, the rambling of her own mind. There seemed only to be boredom, sleep and medical staff.

What was it like for people who weren't her, she wondered. Would they be as bored as she was? Would there be as much… nothing for them?

* * *

**A/N: Sorry about the long wait - Georgina refused to comply... (Selfish little... EEP DON'T HIT ME.) However, she finally decided that I was interesting enough to deign me to write - thankfully. Please review - Georgina and I shall await the new reviews eagerly. Yes, I mildly edited the first words of the Lostprophets song, Burn Burn - my favourite Lostprophets song (Georgina's is Where We Belong... probably because she's still searching for... HEY I SAID DON'T HIT ME ¬¬) Well, I may or may not be going to school today - therefore, there may or may not be a new chapter up by about 5pm. Ciao C:**


	4. Departure

Three weeks later, she found herself back home. How she had survived that hospital was beyond even her great intelligence. Things were worse, however. She found herself sitting in front of her adoptive parents, who were looking down at her very sternly.

"How could you?" was all her mother said. The words repeated over and over, becoming shriller and shriller as her mother burst into sobs.

The girl sighed. How to explain?

"I get…" she paused, searching for the right word, "… bored." That was all she would say.

"That isn't explanation enough, Georgina Reed!" her father explained. She winced at the use of the name forced upon her. She never asked to be called Reed. She never wanted it. She wouldn't respond to that name, just as she never had done before. She was old enough to be set free, at fifteen years old.

Her parents, thick-willed as they were, sent her to her room. It was messy, full of books and cuddly toys. She considered the books to be hers; the cuddly toys were not. They were meaningless gifts from those adults downstairs, at an attempt to make her normal. Normal? Normal was boring, meaningless. To be normal was to be… abnormal, in her mind. She knew that didn't make sense, but to her it did. What was it like in her parents' funny little brains? It must be so boring.

She packed a bag, slowly, quietly. In the end, she decided to pack a second: one for books; one for clothes and other necessities. Only her darkest clothes – the clothes in blues, blacks and purples – were submitted into the bag for clothes. There wasn't much, only a few shirts and several pairs of jeans, boots and converse. The rest, she discarded. She didn't need, nor did she want, them. She did, however, leave a note:

_Dear Mr and Mrs Reed,_

_I thank you for allowing me to stay within your home. I regret to inform you that I am leaving. Where I will go is none of your concern. I can look after myself._

_Sincerely,_

_Georgina __**Holmes**_

Her parents had applied a lock and alarm system to the front door, in a fruitless attempt to keep her in the house at night. The code, as ever with those simpletons, was simple: 564. Not blindingly obvious, but to her, they shone like streetlights on a moonless night.

Slipping out of the door in her warmest clothes, she set off. Away from the place she considered to be her prison. Away from the place her parents wanted her to call home. She knew where she would go. To her father. The address was etched in her mind. She knew the streets, the back-streets, the shortcuts. Yes, some of them took her through unlit alleyways. Some of them took her through unsavoury parts of London. She was not unnerved, however. She knew how to fight, how to defend herself. She knew how to run quickly, how to escape without notice.

Half an hour later, she was standing outside the door of 221B Baker Street. The door opened a fraction of an inch. A pale blue eye, so similar to her own, peered out. The eye flashed with recognition and anger before the door slammed shut.

"No one's gonna take me alive; the time has come to make things right," she whispered into the cold night's air. She would not go to her uncle. She would not become a slave to the bloody _svolochs_ in the government. She was prepared to fight for her rights. She would fight for her freedom.

**A/n: Thanks for reading guys. Georgina finally decided to co-operate… at quarter past midnight on Sunday the 10****th**** October. Thanks, Georgina. Anyway, I did use the lyrics to the middle eight of Knights of Cydonia by Muse and referred to the same song in the penultimate sentence. Oh and Georgina's not gonna co-operate anymore until we get reviews! She just said that… after hitting me… Again. ¬¬**


	5. Surrender

She shuddered involuntarily against the cold. She'd sat outside 221B Baker Street all night, refusing to contemplate her only other choice. A choice that, in her mind, equalled the death of her spirit.

"Open the skies over me…" she whispered, her breath coming out in dragon puffs of mist, "I am waiting… patiently."

Her cheek rested against the hunter green door, her arms cradling her knees to her chest. She was cold, nearly frozen. The weather was unusual for late October, but weather in London, and England in general, was strange. She may have seemed asleep, or out of her mind, but her eyes were alert with feverish delight. Her father lived on a busy street only nine minutes away from Oxford Street by car, but twenty-one minutes by foot. She had, of course, walked for seven minutes from her house on Lisson Grove. She could, in theory, have taken the underground train from Marylebone station to the one on Baker Street, but tickets, which were traceable, and CCTV, controlled by her uncle, made it nearly impossible to go through undetected.

Everywhere she looked there were orange and black shop fronts, banners. Posters advertising haunted houses, Hallowe'en parties. People already dressing for Hallowe'en. She knew why. Hallowe'en was still only eight days away, but major chain supermarkets, such as Tesco, were already selling Christmas merchandise.

At least her bottom wasn't cold. She had sat on the bag filled with clothes, which was placed on the stone steps. Something stopped her from knocking on the door again. Fear. Fear of discovery by her doctor, by her father's landlady. She didn't want to be sent home.

She took out her iPod, mercifully still containing a considerable amount of charge. Flipping through bands, she selected Mindless Self Indulgence and allowed herself to sink into her pseudo meditation to the hypnotic sounds of Never Wanted to Dance. Remixes followed. Minutes ticked by. Hours blended together.

It was nearly sunset when she got tired of waiting. She had begun to sing along to the music sounding through her earphones, unaware that she was doing so. People had absentmindedly tossed coins at her, which soon summed into a sizeable amount of money – especially when people began to crowd around the doorstep and listen. That scared her. There were too many people. Always too many people.

Boredom was creeping into her thoughts again. What should she do? What could she do? She had roughly fifty pounds, if that, and nowhere to live. Unless…

No. She wouldn't degrade herself like that. Her uncle would be a last resort, and a very reluctant one at that.

But she had to survive… somehow.


	6. Awaken

_The darkness, everywhere. The sounds, dull. Her ears, blocked._

_The sight of the man in front of her was more than she could bear. An involuntary throbbing, nearly a twitch, occurred in her right eye. He was thin, sallow almost. His hair was short – nearly to his scalp. He had a small amount of stubble – a common look, but it looked more like he had forgotten to shave. Twinkling, dark eyes. A grin full of mischief. He flashed by in her line of sight. In one flash, he looked gay. Tinted eyebrows. Foundation. Lime green underwear clearly visible. In the next, he was different. Very different. No foundation. The tint in his eyebrows gone. A suit. Dark, charcoal grey. Socks the same colour, to look taller. Both items were quality. Expensive. Vivienne Westwood. That particular suit was four hundred and eighty-five pounds. Amazing amount of money. He was short, even with the advantage the socks gave him. _

_The sound of laughter. Evil. Maniacal. Disconcerting._

_A sensation of heat. Blazing orange against her shut eyelids. Cringing. _

_Trying to get away. Unable to move, bound by twists of rope. Handmade rope. Tied tight. Chafing against her wrists. _

_Must quell the panic. _

_Fear is not an option. _

_Failure is not an option. _

_Must escape. _

_Short of breath. _

_Heart pounding erratically. _

_Panic, however much it was quelled, returned._

_Fear permeated throughout. _

_A cry of help, the voice hoarse. Her own voice. _

_Coughing. Choking on the smoke. _

_Trying to get lower. Unable to. _

_Trying to get away. Unable to. _

_Trapped. Forced to die._

She gasped, sweat covering her in a slick coat. She was relieved to see that there was no fire, no heat. It had been a dream. Her fear, her panic, the erratic heartbeat – they had been real. Physical reactions to the subconscious mind. She shivered and looked down, a bark of laughter escaping from her lips. No wonder she had felt trapped. Her legs had gotten entangled in the sheets.

Sheets? Last thing she remembered was feeling extremely exhausted outside her father's house. How had she gotten into a bed, and more importantly, how had she gotten there?

She was still dressed. Her bags lay next to the bed. A CCTV camera in the corner of the room. It dawned on her. Her uncle had gotten her. Oh wonderful. This wasn't anything like the way she had planned it to be. She didn't want to be dependent on anyone, and her uncle was extremely low on the list of people she'd turn to in an emergency. He practically wasn't even on it. She sneered in contempt toward the camera, before sitting upright in the bed, trying to wrap the sheet around her lithe form in some form of modesty.


End file.
